1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to video home entertainment systems, and particularly to switching apparatus for permitting a television set to operate in either its normal mode of use or as a data terminal.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the general field of video home entertainment systems, a problem has arisen in that it is desirable to employ one's television as a video multi-purpose terminal as well as in its normal mode of use for radio frequency reception. In order to employ the television set, for example, with a video game system, the owner of the television set generally must reach around to the rear of the television to manually switch from RF antenna reception to local reception. Besides the field of video games, home computer terminals and video tape and disc recording and playing equipment generally require this same manual actuation of an antenna switch from RF antenna to local reception.
Yu, U.S. Pat. No. 4,092,897, discloses a video record player switching system which automatically disassociates a TV antenna lead-in upon turning on a video tape recorder. While Yu eliminates the manual actuation of the antenna switch, the antenna lead-in is switched to video record player reception at the video record player by activating the on/off switch of the video tape recorder. The switching function is integrally associated with the on/off switch and the antenna lead-in must appear at the video tape recorder.
Since the television set is normally provided with its own local antenna, it is believed desirable that an antenna switch at the television set necessary for the aforementioned game and data terminal features be remotely actuatable. To this end, it is desirable to employ the video signal provided by the associated video recording, game or data terminal apparatus to perform the remote actuation. On the other hand, the provided video signal must not be significantly degraded, otherwise, the quality of the video signal when displayed might suffer.